Army drawdown

The headquarters and headquarters battalion of Fort Carson’s 4th Infantry Division will lose two of its five companies, affecting about 200 soldiers, officials announced last month. The unit includes trumpeters, intelligence experts, payroll clerks, cooks, drivers and logistics experts. The cuts come as the Army looks to slash overhead to help it shrink its active-duty end strength to 450,000 soldiers. The service is reducing division headquarters and other management units by 25 percent, reported the Gazette. To accommodate the cut, the Army redesigned the headquarters unit to eliminate management jobs while preserving capabilities needed in war. “We lost some signalers and we lost some intelligence personnel as well during the redesign,” said Lt. Col. Justin Howe, commander of the headquarters battalion. During deployments, some of the unit’s functions will be filled by the National Guard.

Despite the loss of Fort Benning’s 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, there is still reason to be optimistic about the prospects for economic growth in the Chattahoochee Valley, according to the consultant studying the impact of the cutbacks. Matrix Design Group presented the results on Friday of its assessment of the economic impact of the cuts on the seven counties surrounding the post in west central Georgia. While the loss of the brigade combat team would affect the local housing market, schools, retail spending and personal wages, the region’s economy can overcome the setback and possibly offset it through other missions at Fort Benning, said Sal Nodjomian, the study’s project manager and executive vice president for Matrix …

The Army is converting Fort Knox’s Ireland Army Community Hospital to a community health clinic in response to the post’s declining population. Emergency room services will be eliminated Sept. 1 and labor delivery services will be eliminated in the coming months. The hospital’s last operating room surgery was performed in July; inpatient services closed in June. The transition to a clinic will affect about 200 hospital employees, including those on OB/GYN, ER and surgery services …

The loss of 3,350 soldiers from Fort Hood as the Army shrinks its active-duty end strength from 490,000 to 450,000 soldiers will not significantly affect Killeen and the surrounding area of central Texas, according to a study commissioned by the city. “A 3,350-troop reduction, in my opinion, will not cause a significant impact on this region,” Rick Gibbs, the study’s author, told the Killeen Daily Herald. “Where I would worry in my own experience in doing numbers is if you’ve got [a reduction of] 10,000 to 12,000 soldiers — a whole division …

There are a variety of measures the region around Columbus, Ga., as well as the state, should pursue to help the Chattahoochee Valley overcome the loss of Fort Benning’s 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, according to the consultant studying the reduction’s economic impact. The post is slated to lose 2,800 soldiers by the end of the summer, part of the Army’s latest restructuring, which will shrink its active-duty end strength from 490,000 to 450,000 by the end of fiscal 2018. When dependents are added, the region can be expected to lose about 8,000 residents …

Without the additional funds afforded by allocating $18 billion from DOD’s overseas contingency operations account to base budget needs, as its House counterpart did, the Senate Armed Services Committee had no choice but to endorse the Pentagon’s scheduled drawdown of the Army, under the fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill the panel approved Thursday. The Senate version upholds the administration’s plan to cut the Army’s active-duty end strength from 475,000 this year to 460,000 in FY 2017. Similarly, the measure matches DOD’s request to shrink the Army National Guard from an authorized level of 342,000 soldiers in FY 2016 to 335,000 next year. The size of the Army Reserve would drop from 198,000 troops to 195,000 …